State Required To Pay Legal Fees In Gay Marriage Fight

April 19, 2016

Lawyers representing plaintiffs who successfully challenged Florida’s ban on same-sex marriage are entitled to collect legal fees from the state, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle’s order Friday came several months after Attorney General Pam Bondi first balked at having the state pay more than $500,000 in fees for lawyers representing same-sex couples.

Late last month — more than a year after same-sex marriages began in Florida — Hinkle issued a final judgment declaring that the state’s voter-approved prohibition against gay marriage is unconstitutional.

Jim Brenner and his partner Chuck Jones, a Tallahassee couple who have been together for nearly three decades and were married in Canada, filed the initial lawsuit against the state challenging the gay marriage prohibition. Brenner and Jones later asked Stephen Schlairat and Ozzie Russ, a gay Washington County couple, to join the lawsuit. The American Civil Liberties Union also filed a challenge on behalf of eight couples and other plaintiffs, and the cases were consolidated.

In August 2014, Hinkle ruled that the state’s prohibition against gay marriage was unconstitutional, but he put a stay on his decision until January 2015, when same-sex marriages became legal in Florida.

In Friday’s order, Hinkle wrote that both the ACLU of Florida and Jacksonville attorneys William Sheppard, Betsy White and Samuel Jacobson, who represented the Brenner plaintiffs, were entitled to legal fees.

“The plaintiffs prevailed in each of these consolidated actions,” Hinkle wrote, and are therefore entitled to fees.

Hinkle also praised the state for agreeing that the plaintiffs’ lawyers are entitled to fees, a departure from the harsh words Hinkle had for state officials in his March 31 final judgment.

In that ruling, Hinkle chastised state officials for their reluctance in acknowledging that the Florida ban had been overturned and “for a history of resistance” in a variety of areas linked to gay marriage — including in the state’s handling of birth certificates for children of same-sex couples.

“We respect the judge’s order,” Bondi spokesman Whitney Ray said in an email when asked if the state intended to appeal Hinkle’s final judgment or Friday’s ruling regarding the fees.

But the legal wrangling may not be over. While the state has acknowledged that the lawyers are entitled to the fees, it is unknown if the state will argue over the amount.

Sheppard and his legal team are seeking at least $455,000 in fees, including a “multiplier” allowed in civil rights cases, according to documents filed last year.

“This is a victory for the American courts and democracy, in my opinion. That sounds hokey, but that’s how I count it in my belief system,” Sheppard, a longtime civil rights lawyer, said in a telephone interview Monday.

The ACLU has not disclosed its legal tab, but praised Hinkle’s decision.

“We are grateful for Judge Hinkle’s order recognizing the work our legal team did in arguing that Floridians have a right to marry the person they love and that denying them that right was unconstitutional,” ACLU of Florida spokesman Baylor Johnson said in an email.

The battle over the legal fees started last summer, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry. The Supreme Court ruling came in a case involving other states, but it cemented Hinkle’s ruling that Florida’s ban was unconstitutional.

In August, Bondi asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta and Hinkle to dismiss the case as moot. A dismissal would have absolved the state from an obligation to pay the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Sheppard and his team wrote in a court filing last year.

Despite Hinkle’s final judgment in the Florida cases and the U.S. Supreme Court decision, same-sex couples’ right to wed may not be settled permanently, Sheppard said.

“I don’t think for a second that we won’t be encountering other issues in the good old state of Florida related to this issue, whether it be legislative or whether it be just conduct of individual government officials,” he said. “It’s not an accepted thing, just because the Supreme Court says it is, any more than integrated schools is accepted.”

by Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida

Comments

10 Responses to “State Required To Pay Legal Fees In Gay Marriage Fight”

  1. David Huie Green on April 24th, 2016 5:41 pm

    REGARDING:
    ” A “Victory for democracy” ? Nope. Supreme power was not vested in the people nor was the rule of majority acknowledged in this issue. ”

    Actually, it was.
    The people approved the Constitution of the United States.
    The Constitution sets up one supreme court to decide questions such as this.
    Therefore, the people set up one supreme court to decide questions such as this.
    The Supreme Court ruled according to the wording of the Constitution and previous rulings and their reasoning, as they were set up to do by the people who first wrote the Constitution and those who affirmed it every time they registered to vote or swore to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.”

    The Constitution specifically states that the majority can not overrule the minority on matters of certain freedoms.

    The people are still free to change the Constitution if a super-majority wishes, in accordance with the Constitution and as has been done in the past, in fact which led to this very ruling.

    If they do not vote to change the Constitution, they are saying they agree or do not disagree badly enough to want to change it.

    David for the people
    all of the people
    even those who somehow disagree with me

  2. David Huie Green on April 24th, 2016 5:32 pm

    REGARDING:
    “The last virtue of a dying society is………………TOLERANCE !
    -Aristotle. (enough said)”

    Then it is good that our society has many virtues and is not dying simply because we are so loving and tolerant.
    –David (never enough said, no matter how hard I try)

  3. DW on April 19th, 2016 7:30 pm

    I don’t think a few gay people getting married is going to be the downfall of anything or anyone. Live and worry about your own life, not your neighbor’s. What is a shame is this is 2016, and people still have to fight for rights. I’m sure Pam BondI saw grave consequences in Florida’s future if she didn’t “stop the gays”. Maybe she should have been more worried about those unworked sexual assault kits instead of driving us back to the 1960’s.

  4. chris in Molino on April 19th, 2016 6:37 pm

    The last virtue of a dying society is………………TOLERANCE !
    -Aristotle. (enough said)

  5. JS on April 19th, 2016 4:52 pm

    Wonder how long until they implement the lgbt gov’t benefits package entitlement…
    And morality has no place in “Murica” anymore.

  6. patti on April 19th, 2016 2:48 pm

    I agree with commonsense and chris: The Constitution doesn’t seem to apply anymore. These folks are not the only ones ignoring the constitution, there’s our President and others. There are always folks wanting something for nothing. If you’re going to SUE, then you should PAY THE LAWYERS!!. Why should we (the tax payers have to pay)?

  7. commonsense on April 19th, 2016 12:26 pm

    More moral degeneracy on the public’s tab.

  8. RTR on April 19th, 2016 9:51 am

    Well said Kate.

  9. Kate on April 19th, 2016 8:19 am

    You don’t get it both ways, either all citizens have rights or no citizens have rights. The State ignorantly decided to fight to keep voters voting and lost fair and square. Time to pay up for mistakes. Perhaps Bondi should think about what law-suits should be fought and which shouldn’t before entering a battle.

  10. chris in Molino on April 19th, 2016 4:54 am

    A “Victory for democracy” ? Nope. Supreme power was not vested in the people nor was the rule of majority acknowledged in this issue. Another judge perverting the constitution to fit behavior instead of the other way around.
    If theres not a secret agenda to destroy our contry (to me it’s already destroyed) when the government supports a very small percentage over a large majority then it’s just coincidental ?